128 9 5
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I was working on my dissertation that summer, and I took a part-time job doing psychological testing in a poor public school system. The town would send me around to different elementary schools to test their most troubled children, or, rather,…
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1451113
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156165
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What a nation!
First we lost our money
Now we’ve lost our funny
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114955
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(I would cite here “corpse plumbers”, but I fear being misconstrued.)
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160765
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In your mouth is the attic studio
Where your father’s brushes lie wet with water
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91074
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As Sebald says, I grew up in the shadow of war....
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2646124
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None of us in the barn knew what to do about the lowing cows. Their slowly rising complaint started off as a half-hearted protest but soon gained in volume and unsettling portent.
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11584
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Women have been mean to women since Biblical times, Sarah and Hagar vying for Abraham's loyalty, to the Archie comics with best friend rivals Betty and Veronica. Usually the conflict is over a man, but it could be merely envy or a…
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204654
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Often we sit in silence and age. We are observers of dust, fashioning ourselves into antiques.
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262152
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Rowan’s arm burned and throbbed like the center of a neutron star as it went critical for minutes turned inside-out like hours. Standing in a wall, then huddled underneath the couch, she danced around the rim of consciousness, ripping at the seams of her
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121465
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I’ll take my Christmas carols neat-
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168665
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52. they hate the word hate
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138344
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My story begins where so many have ended, strapped fast to a cold table, just moments from a lobotomy needle and anything resembling the man that I am.
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148064
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your words that came crashing over me/
so cold the clear shock was like salt water
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1622105
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Walter met Danial at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. They didn't have much in common at first, other than AA, with Walter on the recovery side of treatment and Danial reluctantly just beginning.
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185865
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They’re persistent, I’ll give them that. They keep coming. And coming and coming.
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159994
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William Shakespeare (a surname that meant "wanker" back in the day, by the way)
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171464
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And she warms her hands on fresh-cut gizzards, And he forgets the taste of honeyed peaches
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135265
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Mother hated a crucifix. Graven, she said. Evidence that Catholics weren't saved, just stuck in ceremony. Jesus had risen and anyone who had to pray in Latin, count beads or confess to robed men who took orders from a monarch didn't know…
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162765
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I got on the Greyhound Bus at 11 a.m. and sat by myself staring out the window. I could see the reflection of my own dark beard in the window, a 27 year-old man with a huge poem bursting my heart, gasping to get out into the bright lit-up world out there,
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146584
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We may think about so many things and thoughts about rain. We may think about where it is going, where it comes from.
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236274
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167684
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Under no circumstances can you say "fuck" when you're working in a public library.
Especially in the junior room.
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139965
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The one at
dusk is not the one you met this morning.
That one's gone like a head in the window.
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136555
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The world is a mighty funny place. It spins wildly and we are held down by its strong ghostly gravity. We're still able to communicate with one another over morning coffee and delicious cake donuts dipped in chocolate. Some of us used to keep…
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114984
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just want to write a music note
rap my hands all over my throat
jump into the city to stay afloat
gotta build me a damn big boat
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152165
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Yes, I can imagine it now/
how we could each disappear completely/
connected only through memory's fault lines/
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101054
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we went to together are now, according toyou, not to be believed. A memory of athought of a memory, of an arrow. There isno earth. There is no sun. There are no stars. All theplaces we went to together are to be paused,allowed to fade into never. The river is to be…
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2036124
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The fettuccine is a disaster. Mini-ants have invaded the container. Barry spots them in the boiling water after pouring in the pasta, not much more than floating black specks, but too many to ignore. He dumps out the pasta and returns to the closet to…
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161975
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Beneath an opal moon, the open field and wilderness across it look immersed in varying shades of blue. A strong night howler blows across a little girl's face as she walks the field as if in a trance; her whole visage framed against the backdrop of this very act …
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